Pages

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

India is not producing enough

Right now, Indian economy is going through a slump,
and in the last few months we have seen Indian currency taking a massive hit
reducing its value against dollar by nearly 20%. The growth projections for India's GDP have come down
from earlier eight-plus percentages to six-plus percentages – some analysts have
even predicted only a five-plus growth rate. Two months ago, petrol prices were hiked by
eight rupees in a single day, the highest increase in Indian history, and
already another hike is now announced. There could be an economic crisis ahead, but
we are quite optimistic that this phase will be over soon and that we will go
back to getting adjusted to the new and changed environment – that’s the Indian
attitude towards solving all the problems – swalpa
adjust maadi (adjust a little).

Some analysts attribute this sudden worsening of
Indian economy to Euro crisis, while some others blame the policy-paralysis of
UPA government. Many industry heads have been
clamoring for Finance Minister of India to bring reforms hoping such an action
will somehow bring India back on the track.
And the UPA government has recently reacted to allow FDI into some of the
sectors, which is being greeted enthusiastically by the industry body. But the essential question remains - is the root cause for our flailing
economy the lack of reforms or is there something far more fundamental that
needs to be corrected? If we take a look
at Indian economy from a macro level we will notice something grossly wrong
with the big picture, with the way we are headed, with the way we do things. There is something drastically wrong with our foundations.

The truth is - most Indians are not involved in producing goods of
value. Instead, most of us are involved
in trading, buying and selling stuff without actually producing anything. Since we are not producing enough as people, we are not earning enough as a country.

No amount of fiscal or policy reforms will make us
produce more unless we take up the task of increasing our production,
consciously and deliberately. Leaving it
to the natural course of events will not take us in that direction. In fact, I see a reverse trend, where we are
complacently getting out of activities of production, running after what one investor
described as ‘low hanging fruits’ – an euphemism for ‘shortcut to immediate
but unsustainable financial gain’.

Each of the developed countries, like England, USA,
France, Japan, or Germany, have gone through periods of explosive
growth at certain point in their past, a phase of rapid industrialization, when
these nations transformed themselves from medieval economies to prosperous nations.
During those days, they produced goods
on an aggressive pace, consuming lots of raw materials, producing the result of suddenly
improving the overall quality of life for its people.

The important items produced and consumed by all
industrialized countries during their rapid growth phase is steel and
coal.

Steel

Production and consumption of steel are the key
factors for economic growth of Western Europe and America in the 19th
century.

There was a tremendous increase in the production of
raw material called pig iron. The growth
of pig iron output during 1840 and 1913 was ‘dramatic’. Britain increased it by ten times during this
time. Though USA and Germany started
late, they grew much faster, increasing the production by nearly hundred times
in just fifty years from 1870 to 1913.
During the same period, other countries, like France, Belgium,
Austria-Hungary, and Russia, grew in production by nearly six times.

Between 1875 and 1920, American steel production grew
from 0.4 million tons to 60 million tons, increasing by nearly hundred
times, making USA the dominant world leader in steel. Germany was not far behind. Other countries like France and Belgium grew
by leaps and bounds. This ‘explosive’ growth was enabled by major technological
breakthroughs, but also assisted by other factors such as protective tariff,
continuous and rapid expansion of urban infrastructure, factories, railroads,
etc.

Most of these increases in production were accompanied
by a series of technological breakthroughs and innovations, in mining and in
refining. The countries realized the
importance of technological and engineering advantages which gave them lead over others.

It is an observed fact that ‘steel consumption increases
when economies are growing’. It is the
same for developing countries in modern times. Yearly growth of steel production in China has doubled from 13% in 1995 to 32%
in 2005. Today most of the global steel
is used in China which consumes 45.5%, in comparison to only 20.5% in 2001.

Indian
Minister for Steel, Beni Prasad Verma, informed Rajya Sabha that one of the
best indicators to measure development on infrastructure is per capita steel
consumption, and yet we are actually not moving in that direction. India is not producing or consuming
enough steel (or coal) which formed the bulwark of Industrial Revolution. Though India took some right steps
after Independence, it stands defocussed now, its priorities unclear, running
after short term gains losing out on the big picture.

In
2010, India's per capita steel consumption was 52 kg while the world average was
203 kg. Present Indian consumes less per capita
steel than an American of 1800s. Countries like South Korea consume nearly twenty times
more than India.

Not
only this, India’s consumption is heavily lopsided in favor of urban
India. Per capita consumption of steel
in rural India is only 10Kg, five times less compared to urban India.

Though it is anticipated that Indian steel consumption
will grow nearly double to more than 150 million tons by 2020 from the current
70 million tons in 2011, India shows no signs of increasing its steel production. In fact, the growth for 2020 was initially projected at 200 million tons
but later revised because of our poor initiatives and conditions.

While countries like South Korea and Taiwan are
increasing their steel consumption at a tremendous rate, India seems to show a
dip in its consumption because it is not investing as heavily into its
construction and other growth industries. Since India does not spend on
infrastructure it has no capacity to grow its economy.

Though we do not produce and consume enough finished
steel we don’t lag behind in production of the raw material, iron ore. Production of iron ore in India is almost twice
that of the internal consumption. Of the
total iron ore production of 208 million tons in 2010, only 111 million tons
was consumed domestically, while 97 million tons was exported. Looks like Indians are far more interested in
selling its raw material to other countries than using it for domestic consumption or turning it into finished
steel. India imported 7.4 million tons of finished
steel, used for construction and finished goods like automobiles, while it
exported only 3.2 million tons in 2009. The recent scams in mining suggest
that our politicians are in cahoots with Indian industry robbing this nation of
its mineral wealth without creating any value for the country.

Coal

Interestingly,
the steel production is dependent on consumption of coal. Around 70% of global steel production depends
directly on coal, where coking coal is converted to coke and then used in blast
furnace to smelt iron ore. The rest 30% of global steel is produced in furnaces
that use electricity, which is once again produced by coal-fired power
plants. Therefore, production of steel
and coal and intricately linked.

Even
though India has one of the largest reservoirs of coal on the planet, it is
still the fourth largest importer - importing 105 million tons in
2010. Coal remains a vital ingredient
because 70% of the power in India is generated by coal.

India ranks 25 in the world in per capita consumption
of coal by industry and by rail transport while China ranks 1. The growth rate for coal consumption for China follows a hockey stick while for India it is a steady line, showing the different paths we
have taken.In 2010, China consumed nearly six times
more coal than India. Now in 2012, it is estimated
that China consumes half of the world’s coal which amounts to nearly 7 billion tons.

India is floundering.
While it needs coal to increase its energy output and steel production,
it is not producing enough nor consuming enough. Instead it is embroiled in
scams and scandals giving away the natural reserves to private players who are
illegally siphoning off coal to be exported to other countries. It is discovered that nearly 20 millions of tons of coal was exported out of the
country as raw material. Some reports indicate that 143 private companies
were allotted 83 coal blocks with over 17 billion tons of reserves.

Energy

Most importantly, India does not produce enough energy
to sustain the growth of Indian industry - whether it is manufacturing,
research or services. Indian industry
continues to be concentrated in top ten cities of India because rest of India
does not get adequate power. Some towns
and villages in India get only six hours of power per day. We are one of most energy starved countries
on the planet. Per capita energy
consumption of India is 1/5th of the world average, consuming only 571
kWh, while a Norwegian consumes
23,500 kWh and an American consumes 13,000 KWh

No wonder human development index (HDI) has direct correlation with
per capita energy consumption.

The power failure is a regular feature in India which
has only exacerbated now. Most Indian
villages see power outages for most part of the day. Industry in the cities depends on battery
backups and generators. Power generated from diesel generators costs Rs. 14 per unit while the
power from the installed plants costs only Rs. 4. A month ago, India went through a
major crisis where most of the Northern part of India was in darkness for few
days, with outages exceeding 20% of the installed
capacity. This is because of the fuel shortage to the
power plants. In June 2011, nearly 31
thermal power stations maintained 'critical' stock levels while 18 stations were at 'super
critical' levels, with only four days of fuel in stock. The problem is that the production of coal has
not increased to meet the increase in installed capacity.

Production of energy should have been the top
priority for India. Some of the policy
makers have suggested that India has to increase its energy production by
nearly ten times to meet its energy requirements. India can produce energy from coal, nuclear and
hydro. CO2 emissions from
India are only 1.7 billion tons per year, which is one twentieth of the world
average at 30 billion tons/year.
Renewable energy, though desirable is not viable to generate power to
the entire country. In most countries it does not contribute more than 2% of
the energy production. To get enough power using solar panels one has to cover one fourth of
barren and uncultivable land in India.

Not only is India lagging in producing growth enablers
like steel, coal and energy, which helped countries in West Europe and North America to
become the dominant players on the world scene, it does not participate in
other high-tech industries which have helped nations like South Korea, Taiwan
and Japan to grow rapidly to become developed nations.

Manufacturing

Manufacturing continues to be dominated by the
developed countries. And those countries
who aspire to become developed nations increasing their manufacturing
output. Also, there is a correlation
between country’s manufacturing output and its total GDP. As a general rule, a country tries to increase
its manufacturing output to increase its GDP.
USA continues to be the world’s largest manufacturer since World War II
producing nearly 20% of the world’s manufacturing goods, and is still 45% larger than
fast-growing China. India’s
manufacturing output is about 1/6th of China. Some of the key manufacturing items are
machinery and equipment, industrial supplies, non-auto consumer goods, motor
vehicles, and aircrafts.

One important figure used for performance of a
developing country is the contribution of manufacturing output as a share of
country’s GDP. Industrializing
countries see an increase in the contribution from manufacturing.

Currently, most
developed countries earn from manufacturing and high-end services, while its
dependence on agriculture is negligible.

India continues
to depend heavily on agriculture which forms 25% of its GDP while employing 56%
of its population. In most developed
countries and other developing countries, there is a migration of its workforce
from agriculture to manufacturing and high-end services. We see that most of the developed countries
have significantly low number of people employed in agriculture. Unless India steps up its manufacturing game such
movement out of agriculture will not be possible and therefore the income
earning capacity of bulk of the population will continue to be very low.

The transition
from a developing to developed countries also involves emphasis on high-tech
manufacturing, like electronics, which increases the income per employee quite
considerably.

Electronics

Electronics
manufacturing industry transformed the nations like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan,
and helped nations like Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines to break the
shackles of poverty to become industrialized nations. The global electronics industry is at $1.8 trillion making it
one of the largest and fastest growing industries in the
world. While India consumes $125 billion
worth of electronic goods annually, which is estimated to reach $400 billion by 2020, its current
exports stand at a meager $4 billion. India’s share in the
global electronic hardware manufacturing is only 0.7%.

High-tech
manufacturing like electronics industry contributes significantly to most of the developed
countries’ GDP. In India it is 1.7% and
for countries like South Korea it is 15.1%.

Focus on
manufacturing and high-tech manufacturing is extremely important for India to
increase its overall GDP, its per capita income, and most importantly to create
jobs for lower middle and lower classes of India, thereby increasing the
average earning capacity of the common man.

Though the high-end
services industry earns more income per person compared to manufacturing industry, it is still inaccessible to
most Indians coming from lower classes with ordinary education.

A note on IT-ITES Industry

The much touted
Indian IT industry employs primarily the English educated, mostly upper middle
class Indians completely bypassing the lower classes. Currently the Indian IT industry earns $70
billion in exports and $30 billion in domestic market employing nearly 2.8 million
engineers. Of this IT-ITES earns $50 billion (excluding
BPO and Hardware industry). Each year India
is able to add approximately 250,000 jobs into IT-ITES, BPO and hardware
industry. Since the revenues in this sector are a function
of number of employees, Indian IT industry cannot grow more than $10 billion
per year. Therefore, its contribution
towards India’s GDP will eventually start decreasing from the current 7%. Already India leads the pack grabbing 58% of
the global sourcing market share, and hence it will be harder to increase its market share any
further. In near future we may even see other
countries eating into India’s market share.
Also, any effort to increase the number of graduates by increasing the
number of colleges leads to creation of less qualified graduates as already
witnessed in the last ten years, thereby not contributing to increase in
revenues.

Though the Indian
IT industry employs the cream of Indian graduates, an average employee in this
industry continues to earn far less compared to someone in US. An average employee at three companies in US,
Apple, Cisco and Microsoft earns nearly 25 times more than that of an average
employee at top three India IT companies, TCS, Infosys, and Wipro.

Not only does its
employee earn lot less than his counterpart in the developed world, the Indian
IT-ITES industry does not create a sustainable ecosystem. For example, a company like Boeing conducts
business with thousands of engineering companies which depend on it for their
survival. Most technology companies in
US conduct business with many smaller companies - sourcing components,
products and technology from them. They
also tend to invest and acquire affiliated companies. In India, the only companies this IT-ITES
industry tends to spawn are catering, security, cab services, etc.

Our fascination
with this industry is mainly because of its attractiveness to Indian upper
middle class which sends it kids to engineering colleges and then into Indian
software services industry. Otherwise,
Indian IT industry can never be the main source for generation of employment for
most of Indian middle and lower classes.

Policy-paralysis or short-sightedness?

The general
malaise is not just the paralysis of policy as described by Indian media. It is far deeper and far serious. The problem is that Indians are not thinking
big, not thinking long-term. The problem
is myopia, accompanied by greed.

One look at city
planning, its sanitary system, and its road construction reflects this
short-sightedness. The sewage system
cannot sustain a single rain, and the roads need to be repaired every three
months. New townships are constructed
with narrow roads that block all the traffic.
A big mall exits right onto a traffic junction; and a bus stop is situated
right on the ramp that enters the freeway.
First a highway is built to connect the city to the airport which takes
few years, and then within a year it is completely broken up make another
elevated roadway. High rise apartments
open into narrow streets. There are no
parks, no recreational facilities or sports complexes. There are no playgrounds for children to
play.

India releases a
National Telecom Policy which includes an ambitious plan to promote domestic
industry, but telecom companies are plagued with bureaucracies of archaic laws
from a Telegraph Act that ails from 1885.
Indian Manufacturing Policy and
Indian Semiconductor Policy are fraught with lacunae, missing the important
pieces of puzzle to form a complete picture.

Short-sightedness
is everywhere- either it is city building or policy formulation.

India is not
connecting its villages and towns with wide roads; it is not building railway
tracks for high speed trains. No
factories can be set up in villages because there is no power, no
water and no connectivity. Cities
are besieged with variety of problems making them unsustainable for overall growth. India economy has nowhere to go but
flounder.

Indian private industry

You would assume
that such short-sightedness is confined only to the Indian administrators,
bureaucrats and politicians. You would
somehow believe that the Indian private industry is immune from it. But in reality even the Indian entrepreneurs and private
investors are not thinking big or long-term. The malaise to think small, think short-term
and be greedy pervades the Indian entrepreneur ecosystem as well.

Just take a look
at the startups that have been invested in the last ten years. Most of them happen to be online trading
companies which do not produce anything.
These startups are taking up the easy task of just buying and selling
already produced goods instead of creating new ones. They sell movie tickets online, bus tickets
online, and even sports apparel online.
Instead of creating companies that make affordable diapers for Indian babies
or sanitary napkins for Indians girls, they create companies that sell imported
diapers online. A new diaper company in
India would not only decrease the cost of diapers for the consumers, but they could
be customized for Indian conditions – the way Indian families raise kids and
those suitable for Indian weather conditions.
Not only that, such a company would create an ecosystem that would
employ hundreds of workers and help twenty odd companies to depend on it,
thereby creating a larger ecosystem.

There’s a quote
from the movie Wall Street that is
relevant here. A father who works in
an aircraft industry advices his stock broker son:

Create, instead of living off the
buying and selling of others.

Indian
entrepreneurs and Indian investors are consistently failing to back big
ideas. They are sticking to clichéd, run
of the mill, hackneyed, tried and tested recipes to create and promote those companies
which are not risk takers, and those which don’t have long term vision.

A story from 1800s

Here is a nice
story from 1800s. After initial successes
of telegraphy, one entrepreneur based in New York, Cyrus Field, took up the idea
of laying a submarine cable across Atlantic Ocean to connect North America and
England. Such a venture had no precedent
and it was fraught with many risks. Yet,
there were people who invested 350,000 pounds in such a venture. A 2500 mile cable was ordered. They used warships to lay the cable from both
sides so that it could be connected in the middle. However, 400 miles off the coast, the cable
snapped and fell to the seabed.

Cyrus Field did
not give up. He tried again. This time the cable was connected in the
middle of Atlantic but very soon the cable parted. Described as a businessman with ‘vision in
abundance’, Field went back to the board to raise more money for the next
attempt. This time at last, the Atlantic
telegraph cable was laid. On 16 August
1856, Queen Victoria sent the first transatlantic message to the American
President James Buchanan. Her
ninety-eight word message took sixteen hours to tap out using Samuel Morse’s newly developed
code.

But within four
weeks, the messages began to fade and soon the line went silent.

Nine years later,
in 1865, Cyrus Field and his Atlantic Telegraph Company found new investors for
yet another attempt. Armed with better
cable and a ship that can carry the entire length, they set out again. After laying 1200 miles, the cable snapped. But they were not deterred. Cyrus Field and his directors saw this as a
‘setback not a failure’. More money was
raised for another attempt with improved cable.

This time the
transatlantic cable was laid successfully.
The Times described the heroes
as ‘the benefactors of their race’.
Queen knighted them, including one of the directors, William Thomson,
who later became famous Lord Kelvin. US
Congress gave Cyrus Field a gold medal, and English newspapers called him Lord
Cable. The transatlantic cable
revolutionized the business of news and market, and went onto change the world.

I describe this
story because I don’t see such a story ever happening in India. Such risks and perseverance would not be
taken up either by Indian entrepreneurs or Indian investors.

But then history
is made of such ventures. Economies have
grown because of such engineering breakthroughs and efforts led by entrepreneurs and investors who ventured into unknown and unchartered territories.

Problem

India lacks
vision. It is not able to think
big. It is not able to take risks. And that I see as a far more fundamental
problem as to why our economy does not increase the quality of life of our
people.

India is not
investing in high tech manufacturing like electronics, semiconductors or
telecommunications. It is not investing
in toy making industry, or plastics, or cooking utensils or kitchenware or
furniture. It is not producing
agriculture or construction equipment. It is
not producing advanced surgical or medical equipment.

There is no
passion for engineering; there is no pride in building better and beautiful
things. There is no joy in creating
something wonderful. There is no glory
in perseverance; there is no reward for hard work. India is a story of short cuts and quick
money.

India has
consistently failed to make better cities, promote better technology, and
pursue great ideas. While some countries
build long bridges, big dams and fast trains, India continues to flounder. While some countries build enterprises that
produce technology, valuable goods and machinery, India builds companies that
trade goods produced by others.

India has the
potential to become a major economic force, but what it needs is the right
attitude.

Way forward

India cannot skip these fundamental steps. India has to go back to the
basics and get it right. It has no other option. It has to witness its Industrial Revolution,
it has to see its Eisenhower’s freeways, it has to see its modern city building
with underground sanitation and metro transport. It has to go through the phase of
manufacturing basic goods and then the luxury goods.

India has to
create a generation of Indians who aspire to build beautiful things. It has to inculcate a spirit of celebrating
excellence instead of wallowing in mediocrity.
It has to produce engineers who dream to become engineers instead of
just aspiring to become the bean counters.
India has to build and construct.
India has to lay emphasis on engineering, create more structures and
products, invest in research and technology. It has to stop running after low hanging
fruits and instead plants trees and forests that produce more, which give itself
sustainable advantage in increasing its earning and thereby increase the
quality of life of its people substantially.

10 comments:

good one. In my opinion, except PV Narasimha Rao, in past two decades all other central govts are not stable and they spent more time securing there position and thinking short term to please the people. Now a days it looks like choas, gas cylinders reduced to 6/year, petrol price is in sky, we are lucky if we get power for half a day, having a home for a common man became a dream. .....I see no end to it for now.

Agree with the points made in the post completely. Even if we develop modern infrastructure such as the national highways, we don't quite follow the safety standards. For example, when NHAI closes one side of a national highway for repair, what does it do? It diverts the traffic on that side to the fast lane of the opposite side with no warning signs, cones, etc. to caution motorists coming from the other side at a high speed! I have been faced with this head-on collision scenario many times, and it is a miracle that accidents don't happen often (or maybe they go unreported).To give one more example, take the Bangalore Cantonment railway station. The parking lot is on the opposite side of the busy wide road. There is no easy way to pick up passengers/luggage after parking in the lot because the road is one way. So people (including children and the elderly) have to cross that road with suitcases in hand, after their vehicle is parked. And there is no proper pedestrian crossing, and no speed bump to slow the maddening bus traffic. The pedestrian crossing signal there is a joke. I wonder why Indians have no awareness of the responsibilities of the government bodies to provide amenities and ensure their safety. Indians prefer to instead spend time on 'spiritual realization' by joining Art of Living or Isha Yoga, etc. I find a big difference between Indians and Americans in this regard. The latter are more practical and pragmatic and don't blame karma for things that go wrong. Instead, they make use of their commonsense to fix things, which Indians are hesitant to use, for some odd reason. Whether it has to do with the fatalistic attitude promoted by Hinduism, I don't know.

Regarding ecosystem of IT companies, you left out spiritual gurus (who sign agreements with corporates for their training courses) as well as event management companies which organize useless events which are nothing more than a waste of time and money.

current Korean & Taiwans high steel consumption may be dud to their ship building industry, South Korea in 50's was in a worse condition than the current basket Case North Korea which at the time was undergoing rapid industrialization thanks to USSR's investments.(mainly in heavy industries like steel. But it only took few decades of sustained GDP growth ... most of it generated by 'Chaebol' Corporate conglomerates like Hyundai. So it took only 3 decades for South Korea to increase its GDP from the level of East Africa to that of Western Europe. You dont need 'to go back to basics'. A strong government with vision can turn around things in a decade or two but such authoritarian regime is impossible in a country the size of India without large scale massacres (Stalin, Mao). So India needs to split up !

Like equating religion with “good” is short sighted, Equating per capita steel consumption and India growth is equally short sighted.

Few quick points, India’s low steel consumption partly reflects its relatively limited urbanisation to date; in 2010, only 30 per cent of India’s population lived in urban areas (compared with an average of 42 per cent across Asia and 80.7 in U.S)

India has become the world’s fourth-largest producer of crude steel(having been the 10th largest in 1995).

the government announced India’s first National Steel Policy in November 2005

Steel remains an important source of export revenue, accounting for around 4 per cent of the total value of India’s exports in 2010.

India is mostly a security state and to some (very very less) reasonable extent welfare state. Indians are bigots. They vastly lack respect for fellow humans. An average rich Indian administrator is more concerned with accumulating money so their great great grand son (and not daughter :)) has a more comfortable life. In a short statement, Indians are so greedy, venal that they suck, suck big time!!!!!

This summary on Indian economy is true. But it is just yet another run off the mill.Major problem with this type of commentators is assumptions.They want India to be a great economy as defined by western world.This feeling is very strong in urban English educated. :-)

But is it wish of few people that drives a race, tribe or nation towards economic growth?What about factors like psychology, nature, struggle for survival ....?A few random thoughts that may help understand why India can never be a great economy.

* Bitter the nature better the growth. The inclement weather forced western world invent more comforts for humans.* North and South Americas were discovered and developed by Europeans. Interestingly North overtook Europe itself. Whereas South, with huge natural resources, could not achieve the same growth.* Usually greed is contagious. India was in touch with world changes for more than 1000 years and even ruled by outsiders. Yet India could cultivate the greed. "jyadaasi nahin laalach humkohn, thode me gujara hota hain".* Human life is 'valued' in western world. In India Death, in whatever form, is inevitable event in human 'lifecycle'.

I must say this is a well analyzed but a difficult to comprehend article. No one can argue that we need to focus on infrastructure development. Without a good supply of electricity, a good network of roads, a good supply of qualified man power & raw material and finally an efficient administration, no one can really do anything useful.

Every time anyone talks about Economy, the very first thing that comes to my mind is the name Mahatma Gandhi. Even back then Gandhi stressed on how important being Self Sufficient as a nation is to us. It is truly unfortunate that a nation if 1.2 billion is importing China made junk that includes even silly things like plastic toys and door mats. A friend of mine says that even idols of Gods are made in China these days.

India has one of the world's largest Train Network and largest amount of traffic, yet instead of making and being a pioneer of Train Technology, we simply import it. India has one of the world's largest Military, yet even simple things like Body Bags are imported. India is one the world's largest consumer of Electronics, yet I am not even sure what actually, if anything at all is made in India. Same thing in Agriculture or Pharma or Engineering, we simply dont seem to really create anything that we consume. Our ability to even make our own clothes seems to be fading by the day. With IT industry, there is not a single product that is well known that we can proudly claim as Indian made. Big companies like TCS or Infosys are well placed to invest and create something great, they simply dont seem to want to do it.

I generally disagree with the article tht India should emulate other major economies. However, if we as a nation strive to be self reliant, it ties into the same arguement as one opinionated in the article. Great things will eventually be produced if we start producing what we consume.

Dear Commenters:Please identify yourself. At least use a pseudonym. Otherwise there will be too many *Anonymous*; making it confusing.

Do NOT write personal information or whereabouts about the author or other commenters. You are free to write about yourself. Please do not use abusive language. Do not indulge in personal attacks and insults.

Write comments which are relevant and make sense so that the debate remains healthy.